For respiratory therapists on Covid-19 wards, a catheter shortage increases work — and risk
This is one in a series of reports from hospitals responding to the Covid-19 pandemic.
They had bolstered their ranks with everyone available. They’d hired traveling respiratory therapists, to stop in at Massachusetts General Hospital before moving on, riding the tides of coronavirus from one packed ICU to the next. They’d borrowed others from the smoking cessation program, which had itself largely ceased. They’d brought in students with limited state licenses, to pick up whatever tasks their training had covered so far.
